September 10, 2007: Had my first real VISTA crash yesterday, out of a total so far of perhaps 15 hours use. Not a very good average, but the sample is pretty small. I did a normal cold boot, got through the password and then nothing, nada, zilch, just a black screen. I had to hold down the on/off button for ten seconds or so to restart. I get that kind of lockout with Win2Kpro at work once in a blue moon.
September 5, 2007: Not being able to access free wireless anywhere, due to the incompatibilities that MicroSoft built into the stack, or so I've read, I have resorted to copying freeware software onto memory sticks and cards via the library computers and then moving it to my laptop and installing. So far, instead of ponying up whatever geld is being demanded for a full version of Word, etc., I have installed Open Office, which is performing flawlessly, accepting all my Word docs without a glitch and faster than the MicroSloth product. And it's free. (!)
I also installed the GIMP, which runs quite fast, although there is some minor incompatibility that causes it to hang up for about two minutes, saying that it's looking for fonts. Once it starts running, it also has worked flawlessly so far, and is easilly a competitor with PhotoShop or Corel Paint. (but free) I haven't had time to start in learning Blender yet, but it comes up instantly, and appears to be a strong contender in a class with 3D Studio Max. (but free) So far, so good.
On the other hand, when I try to look at digital videos that I shot on my OWN camera, at least two thirds of the time the Windows Media Player refuses to play them, demanding to go on line in search of a "codec." Ditto for most of my music. The included HP media player has no problem playing the very same files, but MicroSoft clearly reserved some key OS or hardware driver options to itself, as the sound volume for anything played on the HP player is so low that you have to be in a really quiet place to understand any recorded speech in a video.
I almost returned the machine, in fact, when I couldn't play my "Firefly" videos, which are mine, mine, mine, purchased at Target and brand new. The HP player sound was so bad as to make them unusable, even with all the settings tweaked to the max. But the tech guru who sold me the system at Office Depot brought up the Windows media player and suddenly I had booming loud sound - except when it decides that my own personal videos, shot by me in person, somehow violate DRM. Or when it kept telling me that my Region 1 DVDs were from somewhere else...
I'm becoming more and more convinced that this is just a MicroSloth plot, probably in cahoots with the criminals from Homeland Security or other usual suspects (FBI, BATF, NSA, CIA, Mexican Mafia, etc.,) who are determined to prove that we ALL have to obey the law - except them. Once MicroSoft gets your "voluntary" signature on the dotted line, to allow them to inspect your machine from online every time you log on, then of course we all KNOW that they would never dream(!) of allowing 3rd parties access to your all your personal files anytime and for whatever reason they choose.
ROFL.
Who needs Al Quieda when we have these goons? Just what rights are left that they are protecting for us, anyway? To be secure in our homes, and our personal lives against un-"warranted" intrusions?
ROFL.
Oh wait... THEY need Al Quieda, don't they? Anybody else seen "Brazil"?
And who was it that left the reference to Echelon in the Windows code? The one that the EU security ferrited out. I'll bet it was someone in the heart of the Borg itself who had a sudden attack of conscience and hoped that someone would find the warning. Or maybe it was simply the usual MS sloppy security. And these are the people who are demanding that we allow them an infinite backdoor to our personal data?
ROFL.
September 1, 2007: Here's my response to someone else here who was asking about getting a Vista laptop:
I just bought an HP with the configuration you're looking for at Office Depot - 2 gigs RAM, dual-core Turion, etc., for only $670 after rebates. NOT HAPPY!
1. Microsoft screwed up the wireless beyond all belief. I am barely able to get on at MacDonalds, with the router right there within feet of me. I cannot get on at all anywhere else so far. There are MANY blogs and discussions on this topic. My theory: Microsloth deliberately screwed it up in order to force everyone into their DRM system, in which you have to sign away your life in order to get upgrades, and if you say "No," the first time you connect with MS online from your new machine, you don't EVER get to rescind your choice. So, there's allegedly a hotpatch from MS to fix the wireless protocols they screwed up, but it costs money and if you get it, I'll bet they want you to sign on the dotted line.
2. They offer their Virtual PC for free that would supposedly solve the problem by allowing you to run legitimate copies of other OS's under Vista, without repartitioning, etc., but it is only available for the business editions of Vista, which cuts out the students and the rest of us. Meanwhile, if you try to run previous versions of Windows from a boot partition, everyone has assured me that I will find massive incompatibilitys, as the hardware itself and the drivers are incompatible with anything but Vista. (My plan is to run Ubuntu in a separate partition and use a BIG external USB harddrive.)
3> In spite of the dual-core Turion and 2 gigs RAM, the machine is very sluggish, and constantly misinterprets my finger on the touch pad to boot. Windows asking me if I want to do something pop up again and again. Note that I have been a major PC user from the early '80's and make my living as a corporate inhouse web designer and graphic artist. This is the MOST frustrating OS ever!
4> The DVD doesn't work very well either. It glitches, it freezes with brand new major release DVDs and tries to insist that region one disks are foreign. The physical mechanism looks like it could fall apart spontaneously.
5> Vista takes so much horsepower that it not only slows everything down to a crawl, it also runs the battery down in about 90 minutes on a good day. MicroSloth tries to fix that by setting your power as low as possible - including the wireless - when you go on battery, which means, together with their breaking the wireless protocol, that you can't go online in 90% of the cases where people with Pentium 2 laptops have no problem - and are surfing faster to boot! You CAN reset the power, but it seems to set it high for everything, which severely limits your time.
6> At MicroCenter, the few remaining pre-Vista, XP machines they have are selling at a premium, even the same exact model.
7> Anybody up for a class action?
Original post below:
So I find this great deal at Office Depot, a school days special for an HP laptop with 2 gigs RAM, DVD drive, built-in teleconferencing, Dual-core AMD, etc. All for about $670 assuming the rebates actually arrive.
My purpose in buying this machine - and note that although I was a very early adopter - IBM 360 in 1970, Vic20 ten years later, bigtime Amiga fan, etc. - this is the first NEW PC I have ever bought, and my newest old one is a dual-processor 300MHz Pentium 2. So, my expectations were high, but moderated by the fact that the OS - Vista Home Premium - would likely be typical MS garbage - I still assumed that I would be able to access the net via the built-in wireless. I mean if that doesn't work, then how stupid is that?
Oh, I forgot... My purpose was to run Second Life, probably under Ubuntu, as it doesn't yet support Vista. However, there are still lots of other things I needed to do under Vista, as in checking to make sure that everything was working, installing the newest HP and MS patches, etc.
So, I go to the infamous OC library system, which has had computers with internet access in every branch for about a decade now, and wireless for some time. Note, however that the IT guy who runs the system for the county, disabled copy and paste for the first two years or so... Imagine you've finally found the site that has exactly the info you were desperately searching for a legal case, and you are about to time out on your unextendable one hour's time, so now you get to try to write down by hand a 150 character web address, including all the alt characters, and then try to type it back in correctly on your next session. LOL.
And he is also the guy who decided to disallow both notepad and "view-source," so that those of us who are professional web designers - such as yours truly - can't check our sites nor look to see how someone else did something. I was told that the library is "not for developers." Or anyone else who is using the computer as a communications or organizing tool. Just disable everything possible. That's what the guy told me years back when I called to complain about copy and paste being disabled.
So, Saturday, After an hour and a half at the Costa Mesa Tech Branch, which has about 25 computers, I finally gave up trying to log onto the wireless, as I kept getting IP address conflict messages, although the signal was super strong and I had the only laptop there. When I asked the personnel - not, I should mention their tech experts, who were off this last Saturday - their response was, "Oh, the library system doesn't support Vista yet. Maybe sometime in September." Great. These are the people whose job it is to make information available, right? I mean, like, what other purpose is there for a library?
So, I can't install the patches, register for the freebies during the limited window of opportunity, nor check out the system, which is coming up with one repetitious HP error message that won't explain itself and the fix never works.
Turns out, according to the techies I finally consulted, that MicroSoft screwed up the wireless protocols, just as I suspected. Of course, it also turns out that allegedly the IT library guy could have given out an alternate IP address that would allow anyone with Vista to log on anyway. Instead, the library is purchasing a third party patch, according to their head office today, as MicroSoft has not been of any help, and someday it will be installed.
Can you spell BOZO?
